Pharmaceutical manufacturing technology has generally remained unchanged over the last century due to a combination of heavy regulatory oversight and a well-characterized, deeply established batch manufacturing paradigm. The advent of computers and electronic process control has resulted in higher precision and reliability in pharmaceutical manufacturing, but the industry is still relying on relatively inflexible batch powder processing technology with capital equipment costs tied heavily to the desired production batch size. As a result, equipment and plants designed for a large batch pharmaceutical are typically inefficient at and/or potentially incapable of producing smaller batches of less common pharmaceuticals.
Accordingly, improved systems and methods for manufacturing tablets are needed.